Aarhus University Seal

Elisa Nadire Caeli

Computational thinking in elementary classrooms: measuring teacher understanding of computational ideas for teaching science

Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaperJournal articleResearchpeer-review

  • Aman Yadav, Michigan State University, United States
  • Christina Krist, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States
  • Jon Good, Oakland schools, Waterford, MI, United States
  • Elisa Nadire Caeli
A number of efforts have focused on preparing teachers to integrate CT within secondary disciplinary subject areas; however, there is little research on how CT ideas could be embedded within elementary subjects. We designed a professional development activity for elementary teachers to embed CT within science and examined how their understanding of CT emerged over the course of PD. This paper reports results from qualitative analysis of teacher responses to vignettes and open-ended questions, which presented teaching scenarios related to CT. We found that the vignettes allow us to see shift in teachers' thinking about CT from broad and generalized ideas to more elaborate versions of those ideas. We discuss that while vignettes provided a good method to portray changes in teacher views about CT, we need additional mechanisms to monitor how teachers conceptualize and come to integrate computational thinking into elementary schools
Original languageEnglish
JournalComputer Science Education
Volume28
Issue4
Pages (from-to)371-400
Number of pages30
ISSN0899-3408
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Dec 2018

    Research areas

  • Computational thinking, Elementary, Science

See relations at Aarhus University Citationformats

ID: 138702131